Who is your Ideal Client

Who is your ideal client?

Brenton Ward

At some point in our business life cycle we inherently decide to focus on a particular client whether it be demographic, niche or service specific instead of taking on anyone with a pulse. This is an important milestone particularly if we have also decided to invest money and time into marketing initiatives for the business. One of the big problems we encounter when working with firms is the dilemma of deciding who your ideal client should be.

Some of the potential consequences of choosing the wrong ideal client to target are:

Your chosen target client can’t afford your basic level of services let alone take up any value add service that you may wish to offer them. (eg. start up businesses)

You end up doing work you don’t enjoy and working with people you have nothing in common with and don’t particularly enjoy the company of

Your time gets hijacked focussing on serving clients who don’t appreciate what you do

I recently sat with the owner of a high performing advisory business and we discussed how they decided to focus on niching in hospitality businesses. They recommended the following pieces of advice when making the choice:

Look at your current client base and see what client/industry trends make up a larger portion of your overall base already

Choose a type of client who you have had success with helping and their business is a success as a result.

Ensure that you have the expertise to actually add value and become a credible authority in this market and that you enjoy working with that particular client/industry

Profile your ideal client until you have a crystal clear picture of them in your head. This way when you begin to create content and formulate marketing initiatives you are speaking directly to that client and relating to their needs